For centuries it has been believed that the extension of the franchise in unequal societies would lead to relatively high levels of redistribution. According to international rankings, how- ever, among the fourteen most unequal countries in the world, nine have been democratic for at least the...

Economic and political decisions usually involve a trade-off between efficiency and equality considerations. While some inequality is expected to prevail in our soci- eties, high levels of it are objectionable on various grounds. One of the fundamental roles of government is to collect and...

This article uses data from the 1994-2001 waves of the European Community Household Panel to study economic inequality in Portugal. It reports data on the Portuguese distributions of income, labor earnings, and capital income, and on related features of inequality, such as age, employment...

How do the family and personal characteristics of an individual influence his/her edu-cational attainment? How do the labour market prospects change when he/she receives further education? This article intends to answer these two questions. To that purpose, it reviews the most recent literature...

The employment of financial development indicators without due consideration to country/regional specific financial development realities remains an issue of substantial policy relevance. Financial depth in the perspective of money supply is not equal to liquid liabilities in every development...